Bottles for Sloe Gin etc

Malfiore

I am going to make Sloe Gin and Blackberry Vodka (hopefully!) for some Xmas presents this year.

I have saved the 'Bottle Green' bottles as they are a nice shape and are the right size.

They have screw caps which have obviously been broken, so I am wondering which (if any) of the following I should do:

Buy new screw caps so that the bottles are sealed when I give them as gifts;

Use the already opened screw caps that are on the bottles;

Buy corks and cork the bottles and tie ribbon around the top to hide the bit that the lid screwed into.

I also had a look on the Jam Shop site and they do bottles there which are perfect but I thought as I had these...

Any advice/new ideas would be very welcome!

Thank you

poppy-glos

i just use the bottle lids that are with the bottles :-) the corks and ribbons sound very pretty though:beer:

shoei

I don't know if it will help as you already seem to have some bottles but Aldi have in some 1 ltr stopper bottles at the moment (sorry can't remember the price but pretty cheap). They also have spanish olive oil for £2.69 with stoppers I have bought these for my Black Plum Gin and will decant the oil into my oil sontainer.

tuttifruiti20

I'd just use the lids that are there with the bottles. If you wanted to seal them however you could cork them and then seal the cork with some wax seal to make it look pretty.

Flibsey

personally my vote is for cork. to remove the collar of the old seal, stick a sharp knife down between it and the bottle to ever it up. now either keep pulling until it breaks (be VERY careful) OR use a pair of wire cutters to snip it off.

Malfiore

Cork it is then! Yay! I'm excited to make it all - foraging on the weekend

tuttifruiti20

Ideally with sloes you want to wait a bit - you're supposed to leave it till the first frosts have been. I know plenty of people stick em in the freezer instead, but certainly round here, ours aren't ripe yet so be careful you pick ripe ones or your gin won't taste so good.

TonyMMM

tuttifruiti20 wrote: »

Ideally with sloes you want to wait a bit - you're supposed to leave it till the first frosts have been. I know plenty of people stick em in the freezer instead, but certainly round here, ours aren't ripe yet so be careful you pick ripe ones or your gin won't taste so good.

Agreed .... plenty of sloes around now that look ripe but are still a long way off. It really does make a difference to wait - you get a much stronger, richer drink at the end.

Malfiore

Ahh, of course! Thanks guys! I am too enthusiastic...is it around October I should pick them? Guess I can get on and do the blackberry vodka

countrybum

Sloes around us (sunny yorkshire) are ripe, I've been picking tonight!!!

k66

I am going to make some damson gin, I have the damsons, sugar and gin but I am wondering where the liquid comes from. I have a standard 70 cl btl gin, 1lb damons and 2ozs sugar the total volume would fill maybe 2 x 70cl bottles so how does the volume of liquid increase. It might seem to be a silly question but I would like to know.